


Northern Lights

by Nary



Category: Alice Isn't Dead (Podcast)
Genre: Canada, Cold Weather, Creepy, F/F, Misses Clause Challenge, Truckers, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-10 00:18:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8919178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nary/pseuds/Nary
Summary: I drive for a long time, past places with names like Harmony Beach and Pancake Bay and Jones Harbour-with-a-u.  Near Pancake Bay there's a chicken shack and I stop there for lunch, even though what I really want is pancakes.  There are a lot of bays here (not a lot of creeks) because most of the time I'm driving along the curve of the lake.  You think of a lake and you picture something like a pond, a little thing you can see to the other side of, but this is different.  It's so big, like an ocean confined within a country, an ocean that wants to break free.  I couldn't possibly see what's on the other side, even if it wasn't starting to snow.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ectotherm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ectotherm/gifts).



What is a border anyway, Alice? An imaginary line some dead men drew on a map, cutting a continent in half with their pens. Into thirds, really - it's easy to forget Mexico's part of North America too, especially when you're this far north and it feels like you might never be warm again. Yeah, I'm in Canada, somewhere between Sault Ste. Marie and Thunder Bay. Did you know they put the 'e' on the end of 'saint' because she's a woman? And because of French, I guess. All the signs are in both languages here, doubling their length. You barely have time to read them before you've driven by. 

I didn't even have a passport when I started this job. I never travelled outside the States - never had the money, or a good reason to go - so why would I need one? But a couple days ago, after I stopped for lunch and a shower at a truck stop north of Dayton, I came back out to my truck and found a box sitting on the driver's seat. I had locked the door, of course - I always do, I'm kind of paranoid about double- and triple-checking it. But there it was anyway, with a sticker from Bay & Creek on the outside. I decided it was probably safe to open it.

Inside was a passport with my name on it. In the photo I looked surprised. I _was_ surprised. I didn't remember anyone taking my photo, and I definitely didn't remember applying for a passport. I dug deeper in the box, and found a pair of gloves, a hat, and a note that just said "Stay warm!" It was in a woman's handwriting, I'm pretty sure. Like how my mom used to put little notes in my lunchbox when I was in grade school. Are there office workers at Bay  & Creek, people whose job it is to put a human face on the company, people who write little hand-written notes to their drivers and then go home to walk their dogs and pack lunches for their kids for the next school day?

I drove up through Michigan. The wait at the border was long, trucks backed up for hours. Their computer system was down, and the customs agents had to check everything manually. I waited, truck idling, burning gas and going nowhere. None of the other drivers around me made eye contact. Everyone just wanted to get through the border and get on with their routes, off to Toronto or Winnipeg or wherever they were headed. I was going to Nipigon. I'd never even heard of Nipigon - had to look it up. It's on the north side of Lake Superior, it's got about fifteen hundred people, and I was bringing in a shipment of little plastic dolls. More dolls than there were people in Nipigon. _What did they even need with that many dolls?_ I wondered as I sat in that line of trucks with nothing else to do. 

I could feel the bridge swaying under me as I sat there waiting - you don't notice it so much when you're moving, but when you're stopped, you notice it a lot more. Bridges are designed to be flexible, to sway with the wind, to bend with the weight of their burdens. It's when they're too rigid that they snap. But that doesn't mean I have to like how it feels.

I entertained fantasies of being turned back at the border, of having to tell Bay & Creek that I couldn't complete the job, they'd have to find someone else. But the border guard barely glanced at my passport and my shipping manifest. "Bay & Creek, eh?" she said, checking off some boxes on her paper and clipboard. "Two of you in one day's kinda unusual. Well, have a safe trip. The weather's going to get nasty."

And just like that, I was in Canada. You wouldn't think crossing an imaginary line would make that much of a difference, but it does. For one thing, I didn't realize how bombarded we are with billboards on the highway, advertising divorce lawyers and weight-loss clinics and strip clubs, until they weren't there. (Do I really want to call that divorce lawyer, Alice? Maybe stop at a strip club on my way? I don't even know anymore.) And what did the border guard mean about there being two of us? Are you ahead of me on the road somewhere, or is it someone else?

***

I drive for a long time, past places with names like Harmony Beach and Pancake Bay and Jones Harbour-with-a-u. Near Pancake Bay there's a chicken shack and I stop there for lunch, even though what I really want is pancakes. There are a lot of bays here (not a lot of creeks) because most of the time I'm driving along the curve of the lake. You think of a lake and you picture something like a pond, a little thing you can see to the other side of, but this is different. It's so big, like an ocean confined within a country, an ocean that wants to break free. I couldn't possibly see what's on the other side, even if it wasn't starting to snow. 

There are a lot of pine trees here, and a lot of snow. There was a woman from Canada who worked at the coffee shop around the corner from our place - do you remember Claire? She was friendly, like just a little too friendly for an American, you know? But she always used to say that Canada wasn't really snowy all the time, they didn't live in igloos, that it got warm there in the summer, whenever people would tease her about it. This place looks like the version of Canada I think most of us have in our heads, if we think about Canada at all. It's big and empty and cold. I haven't seen another truck in miles - sorry, kilometers. Sorry, I'm apologizing too much too - it rubs off on you. Sorry.

The sign I just passed said 'Unorganized North District', and I think, what kind of place has all this land, all this space, and doesn't organize it? When you look at a map of Canada, you can see how most of the communities cluster near the border, but there's all of this huge, cold landmass above them, bearing down on them, trying to force them south. I used to wonder if America was special in its weirdness - whether we were the only ones who saw lights in the sky, or if people just knew better in Canada and stayed out of the empty places. Now I know that this is a land that doesn't want us in it. The ones who can resist that push to comfort and warmth and community must be so strong, Alice, to survive here. I don't think I'm strong enough.

***

There's a break in the trees and the landscape blends into the horizon, everything grey and white, the same shades of ice and rock and storm cloud. The heater on my rig is working overtime and even then my hands are cold, white-knuckled on the wheel. I try to see if there's a place I can stop anywhere up ahead, in case the storm gets worse, but I'm in a provincial park now, and there won't be anything until I get to the other side. 

The storm gets worse. I pass by a little blue car that shouldn't be out in this weather - I shouldn't be out in this weather either, but that car is fishtailing and swerving on the icy road. I get nervous passing it, in case the driver loses control and hits me. I'd be okay, probably, way up here, at least if my truck was still in any condition to drive, but they wouldn't. I wonder what's so important to them that they had to go out in this blizzard. I hope they'll make it all right.

Lines on the road are just a distant memory now. All I can do is drive where I imagine they are, in the ruts left by other trucks before mine. And there's this hill, god, this hill so steep I'm afraid I'm not going to make it up there. My tires spin on the ice and make a sound like screaming. Or is that my tires? Even when I finally inch - sorry, centimeter my way to the top of the rocky hill, I can still hear it. Maybe it's the wind. I'd like to think it's the wind.

Going down the hill isn't any better. I'm riding the brake the whole way, terrified of sliding off the road and not being found until June, or whenever summer comes here. When I do hit an icy patch and skid off to the shoulder, the cab and the trailer jackknifing, everything goes into slow motion. _Nobody needs dolls this badly,_ I have time to think before the rig and I shudder to a stop in a snowbank. 

I'm recording this to try and calm down and think about what to do. It's still warm in the cab of the truck, but the engine sputters when I try to turn it over, and I know it'll get cold fast. I put on the hat and gloves to keep warm - they have the Bay & Creek logo on them, I just noticed. Cute. I look at the snow outside, already piling up in the ruts my tires left, and the thought of going out into it makes me ache. Maybe if I stay here someone else will pass by - a logging truck, or that little blue car I passed an hour ago. My cell phone has no signal. They thought of a passport, but didn't think to spring for international roaming.

There's a gap in the snow, like someone pulling back a curtain for a second or two, and up ahead I see a building, just at the side of the road. It looks utilitarian, governmental, grey like the stone and the sky, but maybe there's someone there, or a phone I can use to call a tow truck and get me out of this drift. Maybe it's warm enough that I could stay there overnight and try to dig myself out in the morning. 

I'm going to go for it, Alice. I can already see my breath in here, and it's only going to get colder. They say freezing to death is just like falling asleep, so it probably wouldn't hurt, right? But I'm not going to just doze off here in my cab. I'm going to go down fighting. 

Okay. Okay. If I don't make it back, I love you, Alice. 

***

Oh god, it's cold. It's so cold it hurts to breathe. The bastards who said it doesn't hurt to freeze to death weren't thinking about how your lungs seize up, fighting against the air itself, or how your skin gets red and sore, almost like a burn. They also didn't mention how all the little hairs in your nose freeze and itch and stick together. What the fuck is that about?

The building was weird, Alice, but I guess you already know that. It was like a toll booth or a customs post, with a barrier across the road and everything, but way out here in the middle of nowhere. What country or state was I passing into? Inner Canada? Canada Part II, Electric Boogaloo? 

There was nobody there, but I was so glad to be out of the snow and wind that I didn't care. It was warm, that was all that mattered. It was only once I started looking around, taking in the worn couch, the TV, the inexplicable smell of bread baking that it hit me. It was our place, Alice, our old place. It was like someone peeked into our past and re-created the apartment where we first lived together, here in the wilderness. It didn't make sense, nothing about it made sense, and part of me wondered if it was a trap, somehow. If this place was like a... a venus flytrap that could read my mind and make itself into something alluring, just for me. Or if maybe I was just losing it, imagining this as I lay freezing to death in a snowbank somewhere. 

But there was a note on the table, Alice. And it was in your handwriting. And somehow I felt like, whatever else my mind could conjure up to comfort me, it wouldn't have written that note. Not that way.

"Chipmunk, I know you're stuck right now. That downhill stretch is a real bitch, isn't it? But it'll be okay. The snow's supposed to stop by midnight, and then the view's incredible. Make sure you look up."

... See, if my mind had written that, it would have ended with 'I love you', but it didn't. 

I lay down on the couch, thinking I'd just rest for a little while. I'd been driving for at least twelve hours, and it felt so good to be able to close my eyes. I don't know how long I slept there, in our apartment. When I woke up, I could tell that the snow had stopped. Everything was so quiet, like it was muffled under a blanket. Even the wind had stopped its hollowing.

I put back on my Bay & Creek gloves, my Bay & Creek hat, and stepped outside. It was still cold, blisteringly cold, but I looked up like you told me to. There were lights in the sky, an aurora of green and blue and pink, shimmering and shifting like silk scarves against the dark emptiness. 

So I think one of my questions got answered, in a way. The ones who are strong enough to stay here do see lights in the sky. Maybe those moments are why they stay.

***

Anyway, if I hadn't gone out at midnight, I would have missed the tow truck driver who had pulled over to take a look at my truck. She was much better dressed for the cold than I was, and made it look easy to stomp her way through the drifts to hook up my cab and give me enough of a tug to set me facing the right way on the road. "You just got a little hung up," she told me. "That oughta get you going forward again." 

"Yeah, I guess so. Thanks."

She tugged her hat down and got back in her truck. It said 'Cumberland Towing' on the side. I don't know if that means something or if it's just one more coincidence. There are a lot of times when it's just too close to call.

I'm back on the road now, and I should hit Nipigon by morning. I got stuck behind a socialist snow plow, so that slowed me down, but the safer ride made it worth it. Once I make my delivery, I'll swing around the lake and come back down into Minnesota. It'll still be cold there, but it'll be good, wholesome American cold. Maybe you're still ahead of me, but I'm not chasing you, Alice. I meant that promise. But sometimes you just need to keep your wheels in the grooves someone else carved for you, or you'll go off the road entirely.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on Tumblr at [naryrising](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/naryrising) if you want to ask questions, make requests, or chat!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Northern Lights](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10659765) by [Shmaylor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shmaylor/pseuds/Shmaylor)




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